This is taken from the Jewish Chronicle:

VIEW FROM THE TOP
By Jenni Frazer

Jenni Frazer meets the BBC director-general and discusses with him the often prickly issue of the Corporation's coverage of the Middle East, and how he responds to complaints - and to terrorism

"Hi, I'm Mark," says one of the country's movers and shakers, almost as if introducing himself on a call-centre hotline. But the determinedly blokeish Mark Thompson is director-general of the BBC. As such, he has to win the hearts and minds of the viewing and listening public. If that means that this Oxford-educated 48-year-old meets and greets in a classless manner, perhaps so much the better.

You reach Thompson's suite of offices in the Television Centre via a glassed-in corridor where scores of quotes and catchphrases from the BBC's hit programmes are inscribed, from "Hancock," "Steptoe and Son" and "Doctor Who" to "The Archers." This is partly to stop people bumping into the walls.

Thompson, a "cradle Catholic," albeit with a Jewish-American wife (discussion of whom is determinedly off limits), has been described in other profiles as polished, pious and pragmatic, but also as "hideously white, male and middle-class," the latter evoking his controversial predecessor Greg Dyke's denunciation of the management make-up of the corporation in 2001.

But then, Thompson's credentials as a safe pair of hands who could steer the BBC back on target after the choppy seas fall-out of the Hutton Report appear to be overriding any hideous white maleness he may possess.

After his first-class degree in history at Merton College, Thompson became a BBC production trainee in 1979 and, apart from a three-year blip from 2001 to 2004, when he was chief executive of Channel 4, he has remained a corporation man ever since. He's done pretty much everything internally, from editing the Nine O'Clock News and "Panorama," to becoming head of features, head of factual programming, controller of BBC 2 and - just before departing for Channel 4 - director of television.

As director-general since June 2004, he's editor-in-chief of the BBC's entire news and features output. Although he's never actually been a reporter/presenter, working rather as a journalist at the programme end, he nevertheless has an affinity with the corporation's news-gatherers which could be said to have been missing among his predecessors.

In November 2005, Thompson became the first director-general to visit Israel. He wanted, he says, "to get a sense of the story, and how we're doing covering it." Not a bad idea considering the long and, at times, acrimonious history of charge and counter-charge relating to the BBC's Middle East coverage. From BBC presenter Barbara Plett's tears as Palestinian President Yasir Arafat was airlifted from his Ramallah compound for his final journey to Paris, to the hasty apology last year after a Radio 4 "Thought for the Day" presenter quoted a Muslim claiming to be a former IDF corporal who had been jailed for refusing to shoot Palestinian children, the BBC has frequently stood accused of bias against Israel - at the very least.

Thompson repudiates this completely. It wasn't on his watch that Malcolm Balen was appointed to investigate the BBC's Middle East coverage in 2004, but Thompson has a reputation for picking up the ball and running with it. Many of the recommendations in Balen's 20,000-word report have been implemented by him, principally the appointment of Jeremy Bowen last summer as the BBC's first Middle East editor. "This is a story more than most where contextual knowledge is critical," says Thompson. "Jeremy's appointment has significantly improved the depth of our coverage."

Thompson slightly downplays the significance of his visit to Israel/Palestine, as he refers to the region, preferring to put it in the context of many overseas visits. He point outs that while he met Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Israelis, he also met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinians.

"I'd been to other places in the Middle East but not, as it happens, Israel/Palestine. I was very intrigued by what I saw and the people I met," he says. Thompson bristles slightly when asked to characterise relations between the BBC and Israel. He doesn't judge the BBC's performance by any criteria other than its reporting accurately, objectively, and impartially, he says, not how it plays with any particular government.

The fact is, the BBC's relations with the Israeli government have been sticky over the past few years, reaching a low point in July 2003 when Israel's Foreign Ministry pressed for de facto de-recognition of the BBC, refusing to supply it with interviewees for news or instant comment. The head of the Jerusalem bureau, Simon Wilson, was in danger of not being allowed back in the country in February last year after a run-in between the BBC and the Israeli censor over coverage of the Vanunu affair, although a compromise of sorts was reached and Wilson was involved in some of the meetings that Thompson had in Israel last November.

Thompson confirms that "the coverage of Israel/Palestine has elicited a large number of comments, and, indeed, many complaints, over the years. We certainly get complaints from people who believe our coverage is hostile to, or negative about, either the Israeli government or in the broader sense, Israelis or Jews. We also get persistent complaints from individuals or groups who believe we are pro-Israel. or in a broad sense anti-Palestinian. That waxes and wanes. Sometimes it's a rather odd zero-sum game.

"When I was in Israel, it was made clear to me by some people on the Israeli government side that they believed our coverage of the withdrawal of settlers from Gaza had been very well and fairly done - but it elicited a lot of complaints from Palestinians."

Today, says Thompson, he would characterise the BBC's relations with Israel as "back on an even keel" and businesslike. But he does now want to look for ways of improving the Corporation's coverage.

A problem is that some email campaigners - frequently Americans who are able to view output online - generate a landslide of orchestrated complaints. Thompson says he has no quarrel with such campaigns, and concedes that there are "probably" more complaints that the BBC is biased against Israel than the reverse.

He grades the complaints: "Does the complaint have such obvious merit that we should simply say, we were wrong, and accept the complaint right away? The first thing that we should do when we think we've got something wrong is to stand up and say so." That, he says, is what happened in the Barbara Plett case. "If it's not completely obvious that the complaint is justified, then I think it's reasonable that the first port of call should be the programme editors."

The next stage is a complaint to the BBC governors. The governors are currently conducting an impartial review of the BBC's Middle East coverage and are due to report in the spring. This is a procedure whose independence Thompson is keen to emphasise. "I will read its conclusions at the same time as you do," he says, though what he does not say is how or whether he may be ready to enact any of the recommendations the independent panellists may make.

Thompson and I have a Paxman-style moment when I ask him - several times - whether the BBC will call Hamas terrorists in light of the group's shock victory in the Palestinian elections.

"Our job," he says, "is to report the world accurately and fairly, in changing political situations. We have to help viewers and listeners and users of our website understand what is going on, so the first task is to be factually accurate. We decided many years ago not to use the word terrorist lightly, specifically about individuals or groups. our experience in Northern Ireland showed us that for factual reporting you can use words like bomber, or killer, or gunman. That's very clear, and factually accurate. There's not a blanket ban on the use of the word." So, are Hamas terrorists?

Thompson shifts on his couch. "I wouldn't use the word terrorist to describe Hamas or any other political party." He says he doesn't want to be "trapped" into saying something he doesn't mean, but then acknowledges that the BBC often uses terms such as terrorist attacks or acts of terror, and that news reports would happily include the use of the word terrorist if someone - other than a presenter - were to use it. "We recommend that unless there are very particular reasons, we don't use the word. But it's absolutely open to politicians, for example, to say whatever they want. We'll report them and we don't censor people in discussions."

The BBC, he says, discourages the use of the word terrorist because "people have a different perspective of what a terrorist group consists of. I don't believe there's a consensus. and unless there is, [using the word] means you end up accidentally taking sides. And to what end?"

Sometimes, perhaps, one can be too objective for one's own good.